The Gunfighters: How Texas Made the West Wild

by Bryan Burrough

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Big Rich and Forget the Alamo comes an epic reconsideration of the time and place that spawned America’s most legendary gunfighters, from Jesse James and Billy the Kid to Butch and Sundance

The “Wild West” gunfighter is such a stock figure in our popular culture that some dismiss it all as a corny myth, more a product of dime novels and B movies than a genuinely important American history. In fact, as Bryan Burrough shows us in his dazzling and fast-paced new book, there’s much more below the surface. For three decades at the end of the 1800s, a big swath of the American West was a crucible of change, with the highest murder rate per capita in American history. The reasons behind this boil down to one Texas.

Texas was born in violence, on two fronts, with Mexico to the south and the Comanche to the north. The Colt revolver first caught on with the Texas Rangers. Southern dueling culture transformed into something wilder and less organized in the Lone Star State. The collapse of the Confederacy and the presence of a thin veneer of Northern occupiers turned the heat up further. And the explosion in the cattle business after the war took that violence and pumped it out from Texas across the whole of the West. The stampede of longhorn cattle brought with it an assortment of rustlers, hustlers, gamblers, and freelance lawmen who carried a trigger-happy honor culture into a widening gyre, a veritable blood meridian. When the first newspapermen and audiences discovered what good copy this all was, the flywheel of mythmaking started spinning. It’s never stopped.

The Gunfighters brilliantly sifts the lies from the truth, giving both elements their due. And the truth is sufficiently wild for any but the most unhinged tastes. All the legendary figures are here, and their escapades are told with great flair—good, bad, and ugly. Like all great stories, this one has a rousing end—as the railroads and the settlers close off the open spaces for good, the last of the breed, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, really do get on a boat for South America, ending their era in a blaze of glory. Burrough knits these histories together into something much deeper and more provocative than simply the sum of its parts. To understand the truth of the Wild West is to understand a crucial dimension of the American story.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, American History, Westerns, Crime, Audiobook, True Crime

Hardcover

Published November 12, 2025

About the author

Bryan Burrough joined Vanity Fair in August 1992 and has been a special correspondent for the magazine since January 1995. He has reported on a wide range of topics, including the events that led to the war in Iraq, the disappearance of Natalee Holloway, and the Anthony Pellicano case. His profile subjects have included Sumner Redstone, Larry Ellison, Mike Ovitz, and Ivan Boesky.

Prior to joining Vanity Fair, Burrough was an investigative reporter at The Wall Street Journal. In 1990, with Journal colleague John Heylar, he co-authored Barbarians at the Gate (HarperCollins), which was No. 1 on the New York Times nonfiction best-seller list for 39 weeks. Burrough's oth­er books include Vendetta: American Express and the Smearing of Edmund Safra (HarperCollins, 1992), Dragonfly: NASA and the Crisis Aboard Mir (HarperCollins, 1998); and Public Enemies: America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933–34 (Penguin Press, 2004).

Burrough is a three-time winner of the John Hancock Award for excellence in financial journalism. He lives in Summit, New Jersey with his wife Marla and their two sons.

Reviews

[Brendan (History Nerds United) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think one of the hardest time periods to write about is the Wild West. Nearly every story it seems needs to end with a disclaimer saying, "At least that's what we think happened." An author needs to be able to present the truth while not forgetting to have fun with the absurdities of the time. In The Gunfighters by Bryan Burrough, it is quite clear he is having fun.

The subtitle of the book is "How Texas Made the West Wild," is kind of besides the point. In fact, the connection Burrough tries to make might be the weakest part of the book. Yes, many of these stories are in Texas, or involve Texans, or people who spent time in Texas. I think you could swap out other states and this set of criteria would still hold true. It's not that I disagree with the author on this, but even he seems to forget about this connection about a quarter of the way through. The same can be said of the honor code aspect of the West. It is explored early in the book, but does not factor heavily later on. Does it matter? Nope, not really.

What does matter is if we get to hear about our favorite (or maybe just prolific) gunfighters along with some of the lesser known folk who killed just as many people. Burrough nails this portion of the book and it is the most important if we are being honest. Burrough writes in a very informal style with frequent quips and asides that I personally enjoyed immensely. Purists may find them distracting, but for the non-scholars, I think it makes the book more fun. A minor quibble which is nearly impossible to avoid in a book like this is that some gunfighters get lengthy passages while others are footnotes. It can feel like a blitz of names at times with no chance for a reader to connect with particular stories. On the plus side, Burrough doesn't shy away from dissecting the fake stories while trying to search for the truth. When it comes to the Wild West, sometimes you just want to believe the legends anyway.

(This book was provided as an advance copy by The Penguin Press.)

[Julie Rothenfluh · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed some parts more than others. As an overview of the “lifetime” of gunfighters (roughly 1865 - 1896), it covers a lot of people, places, and dates. At some point, it kind of all blurred for me. Burrough makes interesting points and his style is entertaining. I just couldn’t seem to get through it very quickly.

[Nolan Asprion · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think if I ever get murked I have to make my last words “I am shot” in honor of my fallen fellow Texans, who may or may not been murderers themselves

[Carey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good story about the American gunfighter era (post Civil War to early 1900s). Not especially well written. More a conversational writing tone. The Texas lead in the title was misleading. It really was not the focus of the story. More an afterthought.

[Lin F · Rating 3 out of 5]

The topic of this book was quite interesting but the execution was lacking. It read more like snippets or Wikipedia entries on each gunfighter, rather than a cohesive book.

Burrough tells you a book he recommends for each period of history and it made me wish I was reading those books instead.

[Jess · Rating 2 out of 5]

I still can't believe how much of the text involves the author telling me other books I could be reading.

[John Schorg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Much like one of the author's previous works, Public Enemies, this is an overview of a chaotic time in American history. Here is an examination of the role people with quick tempers and itchy trigger fingers had in the Old West of the late 1800s. Some of the subjects here - Dodge City, Tombstone, Wyatt Earp, Wild Bill Hickock, Billy the Kid - have been done to death in recent years, but this accounting gives them all a thorough going over. Even better, the author delights in taking a cleaver job to the inflated histories of many of these war horses, and it makes for some enjoyable reading.

[Patrick Fairbanks · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another crack shot from Bryan Burrough.

A few really exciting stories in here, but mostly esoterica of the old west. Cool if you dig that sort of thing, boring if you don't.

Burrough always gets bonus points from me for his writing style and humor while covering dry or gruesome topics.

[Stephen Ditman · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.2 stars

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

Basically a 3.5. 3 stars is a bit low - I was in fairness pretty familiar with much of the subject matter and the very informal, conversational style writing was more distracting than entertaining for me.

[Fixie Nice · Rating 4 out of 5]

A neat and interesting survey of gun fighters in the west, pretty fascinating how many were from Texas

[Rick Howard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Recommended for
: Fans of old west history
: The old 1950s TV Westerns
: Western movies in general

I picked up this book because I grew up on old western movies back when we only had three channels and no Blockbusters and no internet. They would come on one of the channels during the Saturday afternoon doldrums of TV broadcasting. My dad loved them. John Wayne was a real hero in our house. His favorite western was the TV series "Lonesome Dove" staring Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones as retired Texas Rangers. I grew up near Deadwood South Dakota where, during the summer, as an entertainment for the summer tourists, the local townspeople still reenact the murder of Wild Bill Hickok by John McCall at Saloon #10. The actors spill out onto Main Street chasing McCall, capturing him, and taking him to the reenactment trial. When I learned about this book, of course I had to put it on the top of the reading pile. And then I discovered that the author, Bryan Burrough, wrote another favorite book of mine, "Forget the Alamo," where he and his coauthors tear down the myths surrounding that Alamo historical fantasy. I was in.

The gunfighter era, that period of American history that Hollywood studio executives made so may movies and TV series about, lasted between the end of the Civil War (about 1865) until about 1901; call it 36 years. Burrough marks the endpoints by the first newspaper accounts of Wild Bill Hickok’s killing of Davis Tutt on July 21, 1865 on one end and when Butch Cassidy and Harry Longabaugh (the Sundance Kid) boarded a steamship to South America in February 1901 never to return.
According to Burroughs, a gunfighter is a any person in the era who took part in one or more notable firearm exchanges among civilians (no involvement with First People or the military). "Notable" is the key word if you wanted to get in the movies. Thus, names like Wyatt Earp, Billy the Kid, and Butch Cassidy became "famous" gunfighters because of their appeal to the press, dime store novelists, and producers of movies and TV.

The image in our head though is two gunfighters squaring off at each other from opposite ends of the street. To establish the gunfighter persona, writers focused on prowess with the six shooter; quick draw speed and deadly accuracy. In truth, that wasn't the case. Experienced gunfighters knew to take their time during a one-on-one gunfight. If you tried to go too fast, you would likely miss your target and get killed yourself.

The weapon of choice was the Colt Revolver invented by Samuel Colt in 1831. By 1837, Colt's factory had produced thousands of guns but none were sold. It turns out that Colt was a great inventor, but a lousy business man. By 1843, he was bankrupt. He did manage to sale 108 pistols to the Texas Navy who never used them. In 1840, the man in charge of the Texas Rangers, Captain John C. “Jack” Hays, took possession of those revolvers and the world changed. "In 1844, Hays and fourteen of his men engaged more than 100 Comanche raiders near San Antonio. When the Rangers fired their muskets, they didn’t dismount and reload, as they always had. Instead, they rode hard into the raiders, pulling and firing their revolvers left and right. The Comanche never had a chance. Twenty-three of them died at what came to be known as the Battle of Walker’s Creek. One Ranger was killed."

Man-on-man gunfights that we like to see dramatized in TV and the movies evolved from the personal duels popular before the Civil War. It was all about honor of the upper class and there was an entire system of rules you had to follow if your honor had been challenged (See the musical "Hamilton" for one explanation of the rules and how men wasted their time and lives following them). After the Civil War, many of the southern men who weren't happy with the outcome of the war migrated to Texas. (Why is is always Texas?) Burrough says that "The honor codes of the Old South morphed into something far more explosive in post–Civil War Texas where resistance to the federal government triggered unprecedented levels of civilian violence." Life was cheap. The situation produced some real psychopaths. Figures like Clay Allison and “Wild Bill” Longley showed classic psychopathic features—sudden violence, lack of remorse, and thrill-seeking. But most personalities covered in the book had other things going on beside mental issues: personal traumas, frontier lawlessness, social conditions, and cultural norms.

The zeitgeist of the time produced characters that most of us in the modern day just recognize as a matter of course mostly because they were great fodder for TV and movies. Their real life stories were no where near what the actual stories were and Burrough tries to set the record straight.

Wild Bill Hickok: Burrough kicks off the beginning of the gunfighter era with the July 21, 1865, Springfield, Missouri duel against Davis Tutt—often cited as the first "quick-draw" showdown of Wild West legend. But he also says that Hickok's reputation was a "colossal fraud" built on myth and exaggeration—claiming he killed hundreds, when the real number was likely fewer than ten outside of battlefield conditions.

Doc Holliday: His rise to notoriety started in the late 1870s when he met Wyatt Earp. From there, Holliday became a constant companion and protector of the Earp family in their law enforcement and gambling pursuits. His most significant event was his role in the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral on October 26, 1881, in Tombstone, Arizona Territory. He died on November 8, 1887, of tuberculosis in Glenwood Springs, Colorado, at age 36.

Jesse James: Jesse James began his violent career as a Confederate guerrilla fighter at about age 16 in 1864, participating in brutal raids during the Civil War. After the war, he transitioned into full-time outlaw activities, starting with a bank robbery in Liberty, Missouri, in 1866, and continuing until his death. He is best known for his leadership of the James-Younger Gang's bank and train robberies after the Civil War, especially the robbery of the Northfield, Minnesota bank in 1876, which ended disastrously for the gang but solidified their notoriety.

Billy the Kid: Started his gunfighter/outlaw career in 1877 after killing his first man, Frank “Windy” Cahill, in a dispute in Arizona. Soon afterward, he became involved with the outlaw gang known as "The Boys," followed by joining the Regulators in the Lincoln County War. His criminal and violent activities lasted approximately four years. He was killed on July 14, 1881, by Sheriff Pat Garrett in Fort Sumner, New Mexico. Garrett shot him in a darkened room after tracking him down and attempting to arrest him following multiple escapes from jail.

Wyatt Earp: The one gunfighter whose true life most closely matches his legend, Burrough portrays him as the “real deal” among a chaotic cast of lawmen and outlaws. His own personal stories did tend to change as he got older, not out of malice or any sense of self glory for himself. Burroughs chocks it up to an older man not remembering things correctly. Burrough credits Earp with understanding not just how to do the right thing, but knowing what the right thing was—and risking his life for it, especially to protect his family. He killed maybe five men during his lifetime mostly with the incidents associated with the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. He was never elected as a full sheriff but served multiple times as a deputy sheriff across several jurisdictions. His goto move was to draw hie weapon, twist it in his hand, and knock his opponent in the head with the butt of the pistol (Kurt Russel did this in the Tombstone movie). Wyatt Earp’s transition into the "gunfighter stage" occurred in the late 1870s. He was 22. His career lasted 59 years and he died on January 13, 1929, at the age of 80 due to complications from a long-term bladder infection. At the time, he lived in a small rented bungalow in Los Angeles, California.

Bat Masterson: Masterson’s gunfighter career began in the early 1870s, notably as a buffalo hunter and with the Battle of Adobe Walls in 1874. His most significant event occured at the gunfight in Sweetwater (now Mobeetie), Texas, on January 24, 1876, involving Corporal Melvin A. King. King was killed after wounding Masterson (who was left with a permanent limp), and a woman named Mollie Brennan died in the crossfire. This event established Masterson’s reputation as a gunfighter and became a foundational legend in his life. Masterson was like the Kevin Bacon of gunfighters. He knew and hung out with many famous names like Wyatt Earp, Doc Holiday, Pat Garrett, Buffalo Bill Cody, and others. He and Pat Garrett were friends to President Theodore Roosevelt and were part of Roosevelt's circle of Western “White House Gunfighters”. He died of a heart attack at his desk in New York City on October 25, 1921. He was working as a sportswriter for The Morning Telegraph at the time.

Butch Cassidy: Born Robert LeRoy Parker, he began his outlaw career in the late 1880s with small-time cattle rustling. His main partner was Ellsworth “Elzy” Lay, not the Sundance Kid. Butch fans were thus astounded when Sundance (real name Harry Longabaugh) shared top billing in the 1969 film rather than Elzy. One biographer tells of Elzy’s grandson’s puzzled reaction. “I guess they figured who would want to go see a movie called Butch Cassidy and Elzy Lay?” Their first robbery, came in the Idaho town of Montpelier in August 1896. Their take was $16,500, worth $618,000 today, most of which they passed to a friend’s attorney. The story proved catnip for reporters. His career consisted of only a handful of robberies. Burrough marks the end of the gunfighter era with Butch and Sundance, accompanied by Ethel Place (Sundance’s girl friend), boarded a 310-foot freighter named the Bellarden bound for Buenos Aires. "It was over."

He also covers other lesser known gunfighters, at least to me:
- John Wesley Hardin
- Ben Thompson
- Tom Horn
- Deacon Jim Miller

The bottom line is that the gunfighter era was relatively short, just 36 years, but because of the "propulsive romanticization, beginning with novels such as Owen Wister’s The Virginian in 1902 and the paintings and sculpture of Frederic Remington, spreading via Hollywood Westerns silent and then spoken, then the rediscovery of figures such as Billy the Kid, Wyatt Earp, and Wild Bill Hickok by popular authors in the 1920s, all of it reaching a crescendo with television’s Western craze during the 1950s," if feels not only that it was much longer but also that it was much more important than it really was.

If you're an old western fan like I am, I highly recommend it.


Source

Bryan Burrough, 2025. The Gunfighters: How Texas Made the West Wild [WWW Document]. Goodreads. URL https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...

References

Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson, Jason Stanford, 2021. Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth [Book]. Goodreads. URL https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5...

George P. Cosmatos (Director), Kevin Jarre (Writer), Kurt Russell, Val Kilmer, Sam Elliott and Bill Paxton (Writers), 1993. Tombstone [Movie]. IMDb. URL https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108358/
High-Def Digest, 2025. Tombstone - Gunfight at the O.K. Corral [Scene]. YouTube. URL https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vxkrh...

Lin-Manuel Miranda (Writer), Ron Chernow (Writer), Thomas Kail (Director), 2020. Hamilton [Musical]. IMDb. URL https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8503618/

Paul Begala, 2025. Book Review: ‘The Gunfighters,’ by Bryan Burrough [Review]. The New York Times. URL https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/31/bo...

Simon Wincer (Director), Larry McMurtry (Writer), William D. Wittliff (Writer), Robert Duvall (Actor), Tommy Lee Jones (Actor), 1989. Lonesome Dove [TV Series]. IMDb. URL https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096639/

[Alvin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Audible. Good listening collective biography about gunfighters. Burrough's initial position that gunfights grew out of the Southern Code passing through Texas and the post-Civil War trauma was interesting; nevertheless, he sort of quit addressing the issue early. He did put the biographies in a chronological order and I enjoyed that.

[Barb Rasmussen · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author completes abandons his thesis/the title of the book, but hot damn I love cowboy stories

[Ron · Rating 4 out of 5]

Do the names Wild Bill Hickok, Bat Masterson, Wyatt Earp, and Luke Short ring a bell with you? Or maybe the Shootout at the O.K. Corral? Or just about any western novel or movie which has a gunfight (High Noon) or gunslinger as a hero (Louis L'Amour's The First Fast Draw). Well Bryan Burrough makes a case for blaming Texas and its exports of shootists, gunmen, and "range detectives" for the violence that swept the West after the Civil War.

Burrough opens The Gunfighters with a chapter on why he is focusing on Texas. He then delves into the history of the first gunfighters with the Texas Rangers in the 1840s and California in the 1850s before the 1865 fight between Wild Bill Hickok and Davis Tutt that many claim was the "first Western gunfight." Mark Twain in Roughing It discussed the mystic of the gunfighter. Burrough in the next seventeen chapters covers the gamut of the West from 1865 Texas to Kansas in the 1870s, Dodge City, a detour to the Midwest with Jesse James, the Texas invasion of New Mexico (think Billy the Kid), Tombstone (AZ) with the feud between the Cowboys and the Earps, the range wars in Wyoming and Montana (Tom Horn & "Deacon" Jim Miller), Oklahoma in the 1890s, and finishing with Butch Cassidy. The final chapter - From Headlines to History - provides the endings to various of the gunfighters in the 20th century.

If a reader is interested in the truth behind the legends of the West, they would do well to pick up and perusing Bryan Burrough's The Gunfighters!

Thanks Netgalley and Penguin Press for the opportunity to read this title!

[Dale Pearl · Rating 5 out of 5]

Advanced Review Copy provided by the publisher in exchange for a review.
I've written this one as best I could in the tone of Texan Cowboy. One of my favorite reads over the past several months!

Introduction

Howdy, folks! I reckon y'all have heard 'bout the ruckus in Texas - that land of longhorns, dust, and desperadoes. Well, I've just rustled through Bryan Burrough's latest tome, "The Gunfighters: How Texas Made the West Wild," and I'm here to chew the fat on this here book. It's a tale as wild as the Comanche raids, and as storied as the legends of our own Texas heroes.

Summary

This book ain't just another yarn about outlaws and lawmen; it's a full-on gallop through the history of Texas, where the soil was soaked with blood and the air rang with gunfire. Burrough, a native Texan himself, digs deep into the roots of what made Texas the birthplace of some of the most notorious gunfighters in the American West. He ain't shy about naming names - from Jesse James to Billy the Kid, from Butch Cassidy to Sundance - all these fellas and more had their boots in Texas dirt at one point or another. Burrough spins this history with a storyteller's flair but with the weight of a scholar's research, sifting through myth to find the grit of truth.

Key Passages

"Texas was born in violence, on two fronts, with Mexico to the south and the Comanche to the north." - This here line sets the stage for understanding why Texas was such a wild place, always on the brink of some sort of skirmish or another.

"The 'Wild West' gunfighter is such a stock figure in our popular culture that some dismiss it all as a corny myth." - Burrough ain't just telling tales; he's challenging what we think we know about the West, separating fact from the dime novel fiction.

"For three decades at the end of the 1800s, a big swath of the American West was a crucible of change, with the highest murder rate per capita in American history." - This paints a picture of the lawlessness that was more than just shootouts at high noon; it was a way of life.

"The Gunfighters brilliantly sifts the lies from the truth, giving both elements their due." - Here, Burrough ain't just spinning yarns; he's a truth-teller, dissecting the legends down to their bones.

"To understand the truth of the Wild West is to understand a crucial dimension of the American story." - This passage tells us why this history matters, not just for Texas, but for the whole durn country.


Ratings Breakdown

Authenticity: 5/5 - Burrough knows his Texas history like a cowpoke knows his cattle. He's got the credentials and the stories to back 'em up.
Storytelling: 5/5 - The man tells a tale that'll keep you by the campfire till dawn, though some might find the academic interludes a tad dry.
Research:5/5 - If there's a fact to be found, Burrough's dug it up. His sources are as solid as the Texas bedrock.
Entertainment: 5/5 - It's a hefty read, but as engaging as watching a fair fight in the town square.
Overall: 5/5 - A book that does justice to the wild spirit of Texas, with just enough myth to keep the legend alive.

Conclusion

Well, I'll be hornswoggled if "The Gunfighters" ain't one of the finest pieces of writing on the Old West I've ever laid eyes on. Burrough captures the essence of Texas - its violence, its freedom, its contradictions. This book ain't just for historians or those folks who fancy a good Western; it's for anyone who wants to understand what made this country what it is today. Saddle up with this book, and you'll ride through a landscape that's as real as the sun setting over the Lone Star State. Remember, the gunfighter might be a myth, but the stories, the lives, and the land are real as can be. Get 'er done and purchase this here book!
https://tinyurl.com/the-gunfighters

[Preetam Chatterjee · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Gunfighters: How Texas Made the West Wild by Bryan Burrough ambushed me, plain and simple. I was saving it—cross-my-heart, next-month-reading kind of saving it—but curiosity drew first.

And thank heavens for that. What I thought might be a dusty tale of cowboy clichés turned out to be a thunderous, myth-shattering history lesson that barrels through post–Civil War America with all the swagger (and sorrow) of a six-shooter epic.

Burrough, whose reputation for investigative storytelling is already rock-solid (Barbarians at the Gate, Public Enemies), turns his pen westward, focusing not just on the Wild West, but on the wild heart of it—Texas. And not the rodeo-and-barbeque version, but Texas as the seething, violent crucible that forged an era. He argues, convincingly, that Texas was where Confederate honor culture, post-war disillusionment, cattle drive chaos, and an obsession with masculine self-image collided in brutal, bloody fashion. This wasn’t just cowboy cosplay—it was a sociological explosion.

You meet names you think you know—Wild Bill Hickok, John Wesley Hardin, Doc Holliday—but not like this. Wild Bill, the supposed hero, dies not in some epic draw but via ambush, cards in hand. Hardin? A straight-up psychopath who once shot a man for snoring. Clay Allison? Sat a man down to dinner... then shot him across the table. And Doc Holliday—frail, sickly, dubbed unmanly by some—turns out to be one of the most lethally efficient gunfighters of them all. It’s not a glorification—it’s a grim, fascinating deconstruction.

Burrough’s style? Cinematic, but with scholarship tucked in every holster. He blends sociological depth with whip-smart narration. You don’t just learn what happened—you start to understand why America became so fixated on gunfighters in the first place. He dissects the legend-making machine—pulp novels, early cinema, and the glorified mythos of the “lone gunman”—to reveal something more complex: a country coming to terms with chaos, masculinity, and violence by packaging it into digestible hero stories.

Texas, in this telling, isn’t just a location. It’s a character. A mad, magnetic one. The violence wasn’t legend—it was real, often senseless, sometimes tribal, rooted in racism, land feuds, and Civil War trauma. And when the railroads rolled in, when settlers and government brought the law to the lawless, the mythologized “gunfighter” faded—but not before leaving behind a deeply American archetype.

Critics have raved—and rightly so. Kirkus gave it their “GET IT” badge. The Washington Post praised its vivid storytelling. Book Marks aggregated it under “Rave Reviews,” and my own reading brain? Locked, loaded, and loving it.

So here I am, writing this with that familiar post-great-book buzz. The Gunfighters isn’t just history—it’s a story about how we tell stories. About violence, masculinity, justice, and the American hunger for heroes and outlaws. It made me rethink cowboy legends, movie tropes, and what it really meant to survive the frontier.

I was not supposed to read this yet. But I did. And I’d do it again.

[Michael Reilly · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a first-rate history of the life and times of the Western gunfighters. Burrough tracks the evolution and stories from the late 186os, after the Civil War when Confererate soldiers continued their war against the union, all the way to the death of Butch Cassidy in Bolivia in 1908.

Burroughs has a theory about the gunfighters. Almost all of them came from Texas and the Texans had adopted the Southern idea of honor as the most important thing a man has. The pre-civil war South was a land of duels and feuds. The honor code was directly related to the role of slavery in the South. It was essential that a white man prove that he could not be treated like a slave.

The Southern honor code became the Cowboy code. Burroughs says that the first rule of the Cowboy Code was "never to back down from a fight and avenge every insult, no matter how small." He spends the rest of the book show the havoc that followed from the code.

Burroughs debunks many of the gunfighter memes. He says that the classic showdown on Main Street, ala "High Noon", almost never happened. Most of the shootings were in bars or ambushes or a result of a sheriff making an arrest or someone resisting an arrest. He sums up Jesse James by saying, "you can't really call him a gunfighter. He was a murderer."

Burroughs argues that most of the gunfighters wildly exaggerated how many people they killed. Wild Bill Hickok for example, claimed to have killed "hundreds". The most likely number is six or seven. (Which is still a lot of people to kill) Johnny Ringo, a guy they did a TV series about, never killed anyone. Newspaper reporters and cowboy books just created myths.

There was some amazing violence and Burroughs describes it. He has studied up on all of the famous shootouts and is very good at telling the stories shot by shot. He shows the Texas crime wave starting in Texas then following the cattle drives into Kansas then heading west to Arizona and New Mexico and finally going to the Northwest as the cattle barons went to war against the sheep herders.

He has fun telling this story. He shares the great nicknames, "Dirty Dave Rudabaugh", whose smell stood out even among cowboys, "Big Nose Kate", Doc Holliday's prostitute girlfriend, or "Mysterious Dave Mather", who never talked much. I enjoyed his footnotes. He uses them to recommend the best book to read on a particular subject, to make wisecracks and to put things into perspective.

Two things I noted.

First, a surprising number of gunfighters were relatively short. For example, it was appropriate I suppose that Texas gunfighter Luke Short was 5'6".

Second, while discussing the prevalence of gambling in the South which carried over to Texas, Burroughs mentions in a footnote that "Thomas Jefferson's gambling debts drove him to the brink of bankruptcy". He liked to gamble, but his business and land debts and love of fine living where what got him into a financial crisis.

This is serious history written by an author who seems to get a kick out of telling us these amazing stories.

[Sara Planz · Rating 4 out of 5]

SYNOPSIS
The "Wild West" gunfighter is such a stock figure in our popular culture that some dismiss it all as a corny myth, more a product of dime novels and B movies than a genuinely crucial American history. In fact, there's much more below the surface. For three decades at the end of the 1800s, a big swath of the American West was a crucible of change, with the highest murder rate per capita in American history—the reasons behind this boil down to Texas. Texas was born in violence, on two fronts, with Mexico to the south and the Comanche to the north. The Colt revolver first caught on with the Texas Rangers. Southern dueling culture transformed into something wilder and less organized in the Lone Star State. The collapse of the Confederacy and the presence of a thin veneer of Northern occupation further stoked the flames. And the explosion in the cattle business after the war took that violence and pumped it out from Texas across the whole of the West. The stampede of longhorn cattle brought with it an assortment of rustlers, hustlers, gamblers, and freelancing law enforcement officers who carried a trigger-happy honor culture into a widening gyre, a veritable blood meridian. When the first newspaper journalists and audiences discovered what good copy this all was, the flywheel of mythmaking began to spin. It's never stopped. The Gunfighters brilliantly siftsthrough the lies and the truth, giving both their due. And the truth is sufficiently wild for any but the most unhinged tastes. All the legendary figures are here, and their escapades are told with great flair—good, bad, and ugly Like all great stories, this one has a rousing end—as the railroads and the settlers close off the open spaces for good, the last of the breed, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, really do get on a boat for South America, ending their era in a blaze of glory. Burrough knits these histories together into something much more profound and more provocative than simply the sum of its parts. To understand the truth of the Wild West is to understand a crucial dimension of the American story.

The legend of the Wild West has captured my imagination for years. Having lived in Texas and now in the desert Southwest, the sites of some of these legendary gunfights are a close drive away. But the legends, lore, and the truth are sometimes hard to differentiate. Bryan Burrough's book "The Gunfighters" was precisely what I was looking for. If you shy away from history books because you worry they might be dry and dull, this one is anything but. Burrough is a fantastic storyteller, and his meticulous research brings to light the history and circumstances that led to this legendary time, highlighting the men we know and lesser-known figures from that era. I was pleasantly surprised by how funny this book was at times, and it was truly a wild ride. This very brief time period set the stage for the idea of what the US is, and I appreciated getting a better understanding of the Wild West.

[Richard West · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was one of those books I just happened to stumble across in Barnes & Noble, thought it looked interesting and decided to give it a try. It didn't hurt that it had a"$5.00 Off" sticker on it.

Not knowing what to expect other than what I had seen in the store, the usual suspects were covered: Wild Bill Hickock, Jesse James, Billy The Kid, Sam Bass, John Wesley Harden, and of course, Wyatt Earp. But there were others who got their due as well, such as Tom Horn and even lesser lights that you never heard of as well as coverage of the cattle wars in Wyoming and elsewhere towards the end of the 19th century. And, because the book wouldn't have been complete without them, the last of the Wild West desperadoes, good old Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were included as well.

What made the book interesting and fun though were those lesser-known names which are known only to their great-grandchildren today. You can just hear some kid after reading this saying "I didn't know my great-great-great grandfather was a gunfighter. Wow!"

All of these names are put into the context of an overriding thesis that Texas is what made the West Wild because all those gunfighters came from the Lone Star State, or so it would seem. And,
perhaps a large number of them did, but remember, Texas is a big state and compared to its neighbors even in the 1870's and '80's had more people living there. So naturally, if there were no jobs available, cattle rustling, train and stage robbery and the gunfights that arose would result.

However, there's more. It's all rooted in the mores of the Deep South and the first couple of chapters are even devoted to setting the stage, mentioning duels and the like. Following Texas independence from Mexico, a lot of those disreputable types went to Texas, although some went to other states such as Missouri (the James boys) and Kansas (Hickock) and the Dakotas. The gunfight wasn't confined to one state, but perhaps a disproportionate number of the gunfighters came from Texas. And, there weren't nearly as many gunfights as Hollywood would have you believe - the gunfight with two people squaring off in the middle of the street and shooting it out was relatively uncommon.

Well-researched and enjoyable, the book flows smoothly for the most part, although the author does have a tendency to insert too many personal comments into the narrative. These add little, if anything and tend to be distracting.

Tons of photos - some of which you probably haven't seen before.

[Joe Stack · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is quite the interesting survey of gunfighters during the latter half of the 19th Century. There are many, many books about individual gunfighters and gunfights, as evidenced by the author’s footnotes and bibliography. This book is a good one stop, or a starting point for those so inclined for a deeper dive.

The author’s writing is nicely paced and conversational. Given the focus of this book, there is a lot of gun violence, but the author’s writing style and his asides keeps it from being overwhelming.

Burrough’s descriptions of the gunfights is equal to any sequences readers find in their favorite mysteries and thrillers.

This is not simply a survey of gunfights. Burroughs explores the place of gunfighters in our cultural history and in the settling of the west. Readers get an introduction to the impact of the spread of cattle, sheep, the railroads, and civilizing the violence.

I liked the author’s footnotes and personal asides sprinkled throughout, and three themes:

1. “On one side of nearly every marquee gun fight was a Texan.” (p. 91)
2. The shift between honor and personal interests. Before 1880, gunfights resulted from a sense of personal honor, such as, fighting over a girl, a drunk arguing with sheriff; after 1880, honor was replaced by personal interests: robbery, protecting business interest, for instance, going after rustlers.
3. The influence of the media. The author provides plenty of examples how the newspaper accounts, pulp fiction, and movies & TV have exaggerated the reputations of gunfighters. Fast-draw shootouts not as common as depicted by the media, and reputations not accurate. Jesse James and John Wesley Hardin, for example, were not folk heroes, true friends to the poor, but psychopaths.

The gap between truth and fiction is illustrated in a humorous way with the film, BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID. The movie gives the impression that Cassidy and Harry Longabsaugh, aka The Sundance Kid, were bosom buddies. Not so. Another gang member, Ellsworth “Elzy” Lay was Cassidy’s closest partner, but as Elzy’s grandson reflected when asked, “ . . . Who would want to go see a movie called Butch Cassidy and Elzy Lay?” ( p. 361)

[George Otte · Rating 4 out of 5]

Burroughs is quick to make it clear that this is recounting is, more often than not, a debunking — early on we meet Wild Bill Hickock, who was much more proficient as a liar than as a gunfighter — but his objective is not to diminish the legends of the west so much as to get the facts straight. In some cases, this makes the book more interesting. I never knew that Billy the Kid, who loved senoritas and spoke Spanish fluently, was so often sheltered and joined in his exploits by Latinos, or that his crimes, such as they were, were rooted in the range wars of his time. Burroughs is great at context — tracing the face-offs we picture gunfighters in to the duels of the previous century, particularly in the South. And he is wiling to extend his account to those who were not really gunfighters but robbers with guns so as to get in the stories of the gangs associated with the James, Dalton, and Doolin gangs. There are killers who did not exaggerate the body count as Hickock did — John Wesley Hardin he calls “a serial killer” who had killed at least two dozen (many black — he was a racist) as a teenager. What may be most satisfying is how many myths, debunked, make the stories of The Gunfighters more interesting. The lionization of the “fastest gun” in pulp fiction and TV westerns, for instance, is countered by the repeated accounts that, no, it’s that accuracy matters so much more. The greater success of some of the legendary bank robbers was the well-planned getaway (which Butch Cassidy was known for). And the goodness of the relatively rare good guys — Wyatt Earp seems to be one — shine all them more. In Burroughs hands, the Wild West does not seem less wild, but it does make more sense.

[Will · Rating 3 out of 5]

Don't let the title suck you in, the whole "Texans are why the 19th century American West was violent" schtick is, I can only presume, an attempt to generate some mild controversy and buzz for what is essentially a fine, but utterly unnecessary, work. Burroughs does try, briefly and thinly, to make a case that Texans of the era were more prone to deadly violence than others, but it doesn't amount to much, and is contradicted by the actual origins of many of the gunfighters he then proceeds to write about. So, I guess it was an "angle" to get the publisher to go for this book. Otherwise this is a broad overview of mid-19th century Western gunfighters, some still well known and others that have faded into obscurity in the years since their deaths. There are a lot of characters and events here, but there are much better books out there about almost everyone and everything covered. At least the author kindly mentions them in the text. My recommendation would be go read any of them. There's also an unpleasant smarmy tone, ill considered attempts at humor and jarring injections of slang phrases, I can only presume in an attempt to be "hip" or something. It makes the author come across as a C-grade "history" podcaster, or an old person trying to seem "cool" to younger people. It distracts unpleasantly. Overall the book is fine as an overview, but more of a "time killer" than interesting history.

[Timothy Grubbs · Rating 4 out of 5]

Misleading title, but some fun information…

The Gunfighters: How Texas Made the West Wild by Bryan Burrough covers the history of “gunfighters” from shootist lawmen to murderous outlaws to gunfights of the wild west…

The book started off with some solid background…how the rise of the gunfighter started with the duels prior to the 19th century (and the late Code Duello) along with the rise of Texas as a independent entity (and later state)…and how Texas influenced other areas…

The book focused on early gunfighters in Texas (mostly those who relocated there or were born there). It then expanded to the rise of the cattle industry and how Texas cattle barons and cowboys influenced Kansas cowtowns (leading to Dodge City and other unruly cities).

It eventually gets out of hand covering outlaws and gunfighters in New Mexico, Arizona, and Wyoming, and elsewhere often with very little Texas connection…but that’s ok.

Western figures like Wyatt Earp and wild Bill Hickok get plenty of attention, as do outlaws like Billy the Kid and Jesse James. The book tries to go into great detail about what “counts” as a gunfight and what is just cold blooded murder. It also makes mention of when the truth is unknown (either due to lack of witnesses or poor reporting).

I rather enjoyed the way it covered western life and the development of the “gunfighter” myth…even if it didn’t stick to its initial premise…

[Jo · Rating 4 out of 5]

There’s a lot to like about Bryan Burrough’s fast-paced trip through the Wild West. The Gunfighters can be viewed as a compendium of sorts, a collection of tales about cattle rustlers, horse thieves, badly behaved cowboys, and some downright murderous gunslingers. Billy the Kid, Butch Cassidy, Wyatt Earp, and Wild Bill Hicock all between the same covers satisfied my desire to learn just enough about these guys to understand why they have assumed such cultural significance, without needing to go into the minutiae of their individual biographies.

Burrough busts quite a few myths. Hicock, for instance, killed considerably fewer people than he claimed. He delighted in inflating the number in interviews with credulous Eastern reporters who didn’t seem to engage in much fact-checking.

Burrough’s explanations of the factors that contributed to the frontier’s lawlessness and violence — and the Lone Star state’s role — and later the end of the gunfighter era are particularly informative, probably among the most interesting sections of the book.

I found Burrough’s use of footnotes irritating. I stopped reading them quite early on because they were distracting me from the main body of the text. There must be some way of weaving them into the text if they’re relevant to the story. Still, this is a minor quibble about what is otherwise a highly readable and lively account of the Old West.

[Debbie Cleveland]

The Gunfighters: How Texas Made the West Wild by Bryan Burrough is a book that deserves your undivided attention. Burrough examines and separates the myths from the realities of what living in the Old West was like. And how the cattle and the cowboys who wrangled them spread across the West, bringing and attracting violence. Burrough cites numerous first-person and well-researched sources to reveal the “real” heroes and gunslingers. And those who played up their exploits to reporters. Wild Bill Hickok appears to have disarmed more people with his wits and by hitting them on the head with his gun, rather than by shooting them.

Burrough’s research reveals that some wives and women seemed to think nothing of being with known felons. He discusses the distinctions between gunfighters, cattle rustlers, bank robbers, and train robbers like Jess James. Sometimes the lawmen’s behavior wasn’t much better than the outlaws. Many “towns” were little more than a saloon, dance hall, and gambling hall. Brothels were commonplace, too.

This is an absorbing book with footnotes and details that are illuminating and sometimes overwhelming. Unlike novels that I speed read, this book took me time to read. I had to take breaks. The author separates the truth from the myths of what the Wild West was like. At the same time, many of the truths are more amazing than the myths. And Burrough lays out in detail how much influence Texas had in shaping the truth and the myths.

[Christopher Granczynski · Rating 5 out of 5]

This could have very easily turned into a bland and boring recounting of some of the Old West's most important happenings, i.e. gunfights that weren't really gunfights so much as ambushes.

But it is to Burroughs's much-deserved credit that instead of stale bread, we get meaty goodness we can sink our teeth into. From the opening chapter about the Hickok-Tutt "duel" to the very last chapter in which Burroughs laments (rightly so) the fact that we do not take care of and preserve our history here in the United States, the author kept me enthralled and wanting more.

There were many nights that I didn't want to go to bed so that I could get to the next chapter and then the next and so on.

Burroughs made great use of historical texts that had gone before him and really separated the lies and exaggerations from the facts, letting us know when it happened and pointing out why that was. I was especially impressed with the fact that he called people like John Wesley Hardin what they truly were: psychopathic serial killers who had zero qualms about ending someone's life. You rarely will read something like that in a historical book like this and it was refreshing.

If you want to know the real truth behind some of the Old West's most colorful people, this is a great book to pick up.

[Shaheryar Syed · Rating 3 out of 5]

I came out of this feeling very conflicted; the beginning started off strong and did a great job on covering the circumstances that may have led to the Wild West (Veterans traumatized from the Civil War struggling for a fresh start, a honor code that may have originated from European traditions and values).

Unfortunately, the book immediately abandons this commentary and instead defaults to dry and abridged retellings of famous cowboys and gunslingers. The author seems to write with the assumption that the reader will have a deep understanding of the history during this time and name drops a dozen names in each chapter in a poor attempt to set the scene of various altercations. Between this and the footnotes that seem more like streams of consciousness that went on a little too long, I ended up getting distracted and ended up giving up on reading these footnotes altogether.

Despite my issues with the delivery, I still think there’s a great deal of information available for anyone who’s been interested during the Wild West and would like a crash course on the upbringings of figures like Billy the Kid or Wyatt Earp.

Next time I won’t listen to the ladies at Barnes & Noble who saw me looking around and insisted that I nEeD tO cHeCk ThIs OuT

[Daniel Allen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Explores the rise and cultural impact of the Wild West gunfighter in the aftermath of the Civil War. Time is spent with a collection of notorious figures from the late 1800s and early 1900s as their exploits created a uniquely American era.

Similar to another book that I recently read, The Unvanquished by Patrick O'Donnell, The Gunfighters casts a roving eye across a vast expanse of land and time. Bryan Burrough's book does a better job of creating a through line. The author touches upon many interesting topics, such as the hatred cattleman had for sheepherders, the ubiquity of Texans and Texas culture across vast swaths of the west, and the advent of train robberies. Time is spent with figures both well known such as, Wyatt Earp, Jessie James and Butch Cassidy, and those lesser so, like Clay Allison, Jim Miller and Tom Horn. I greatly appreciated the author's passion for the subject matter as well as his injection of humor and use of footnotes to pass along suggestions for further reading and other ephemera. Burrough's also deserves credit for sifting through stories and sources that may contain an equal measure of truth and fiction and presenting the information to the reader to the best of his knowledge.

[Al · Rating 4 out of 5]

An account of how the reality of living in the West during the last third of the Nineteenth Century became the myths and legends of Dime Novels and Hollywood Westerns. The names you’d expect, Jesse James, Billy the Kid, John Wesley Hardin, Wyatt Earp, Wild Bill Hickok, Bat Masterson, are all covered. Plus others either lesser known or now largely forgotten. Burrough details the actual person as opposed to the myths and legends.

The thesis laid out in the Introduction is that gunfighting in the Old West, as we understand it today, is largely a product of mid-twentieth century Hollywood movies and TV. But, claims Burrough, in reality it was an extension of the old Code of Honor which resulted in numerous duels in pre-Civil War America, especially in the South. And it involved more men from Texas than anywhere else.

One of the snarkiest books I’ve ever read, in a good way. The author doesn’t take himself overly serious and his asides are hilarious. For all that, there was some serious research done before writing this book as evidenced by the numerous references to books on specific gunfighters or incidents the author cites throughout his book. Burrough synthesizes this extensive Bibliography unusually well and delivers the facts in a witty style that makes for an easy read.